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Defending the General
Slate ^ | Nov. 13th, 2003 | Fred Kaplan

Posted on 11/14/2003 10:35:39 AM PST by van_erwin

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To: van_erwin
Can I vote twice?

Clark: moron
Kaplan: moron

Thanks. Now I feel better.
41 posted on 11/14/2003 12:43:46 PM PST by auboy (If frogs had wings, it would be raining warts.)
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To: van_erwin
Well, I don't think Clark quite qualifies as a moron. Maybe if his IQ was raised a few points and he managed to aquire some morals he might be able to become a moron.

Boyer relies heavily on some of Clark's fellow retired Army generals who clearly despise him.

And who knows you better then your co-workers and peers? When they dispise you it is generally for a good reason.

42 posted on 11/14/2003 2:31:01 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style)
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To: Incorrigible
At least we found mass grave in Iraq which is more than we can say about Yugoslavia.

I can say that we found mass graves in Yugoslavia, and furthermore, I can say we found three Americans in a mass grave who were killed by Serbian policemen after the war was over, but they were Albanian Americans so they apparently don't register any more on your radar than non-American Albanians.

If you're going to lie, Incorrigible, don't address your lies to me.

43 posted on 11/14/2003 5:08:26 PM PST by Hoplite
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To: Honorary Serb
Now comes "General Jack D. Ripper" Wesley Clark,

Quit slandering General Ripper.

...he is an amoral opportunist who would be running as a Republican if a ... Democrat were in the White House! His main loyalty is first to his own ambition...

H. Serb, I don't agree with you very often but were right on target with this one.

44 posted on 11/14/2003 5:31:18 PM PST by mark502inf
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To: Hoplite; Incorrigible
Those 3 Americans were Albanian jihadists-who in violation of American law went to fight a war in another nation. Now their bones rot the earth in Yonkers. They need be dug up and thrown to the pigs.
45 posted on 11/14/2003 6:02:13 PM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: Destro
They were murder victims. They were killed weeks after the war by Serbs inside Serbia after they had served a 15 day sentence for illegal border crossing. Their hands were tied behind their back and they were shot in the head and then dumped into a mass grave with other Albanian victims of the Serbs.

Murder is not a conservative value, it is not an American value, and it is not a Christian value. You profess to be all three and you're wrong about that too.

46 posted on 11/14/2003 8:40:16 PM PST by mark502inf
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To: mark502inf
after they had served a 15 day sentence for illegal border crossing

Executed for cross border jihadism. Which is acceptable under the Geneva conventions-under which non uniform wearing combatants are not covered.

47 posted on 11/15/2003 9:37:01 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: mark502inf
JUSTIN RAIMONDO: IS SELF-DEFENSE A 'WAR CRIME'?

The Bytyqi brothers were members of the "Atlantic Brigade," a band of some 400 Albanian-Americans (and others) who were recruited from abroad to fight in the Kosovo war on the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In spite of US laws forbidding such activities, the Atlantic Brigadeers recruited, raised money, and trained in the United States, and then fought at the KLA's side. The three New York-based brothers arrived in Kosovo just as the war was beginning to wind down. They promptly disappeared without a trace v until police disinterred their bodies from a mass grave outside a Serbian special forces training camp. The bodies were found not only with their New York drivers licenses in their pockets, but also with Serbian court papers indicating that they had been arrested on June 27 and jailed for trying to infiltrate the country. Gee, what a fortunate coincidence!

IN HIGH DUDGEON

Incredibly, these KLA soldiers are being touted as helpless victims of Milosevic's "war crimes." The discovery of these bodies has the US chief of mission in Yugoslavia, William Montgomery, in high dudgeon: he told the Washington Post that the Americans are peeved that the Yugoslavs didn't welcome the Bytyqi terrorist tag-team into the country with open arms: "We need to get real information from the Yugoslav authorities. We are going to insist they do a full investigation."

A VISIT TO MOTHER

But surely Mr. Montgomery doesn't want a full investigation, since that would have to mean an investigation of the true nature and sponsorship of the "Atlantic Brigade," and a determined inquiry into just what the brothers Bytyqi were doing in Yugoslavia, 17 days after the Kosovo war officially ended. He needn't worry: the "mainstream" media are quite content to broadcast the official story: that the three brothers had gone to visit their long-lost mother, and, in the midst of an act of charity v escorting 3 male Gypsies from their mother's neighborhood to safety in Serbia v were detained and killed by those awful Serbian racists.

THOSE WONDERFUL BOYS

The New York Times piece is pure agitprop, depicting the Bytyqis as noble idealists who gave up a comfortable life in a beach town in the posh Long Island Hamptons for a cause greater than themselves. These were "wonderful" boys, we are told, and their father extols their vaunted heroism, saying "they gave up the couch" and an easy life to liberate their people. Embedded in the midst these extravagant panegyrics is a key nugget of information: INTO THE MURK

"They were," the Times informs us, "apparently not engaged in combat when they were captured, witnesses and investigators said." Who are these witnesses? The Times doesn't elaborate, and so we have to turn to the International Herald Tribune's version of the story. Another Bytyqi brother, Fatos, who now lives in Kosovo, confesses that "he initially lied about his brothers' war activities, but later explained that he had been 'advised' not to discuss their membership in the Atlantic Brigade." Young Fatos blurts out that, as far as he knew, his brothers were on their way to meet up with some buddies from the Atlantic Brigade in Pristina. The last anyone saw of them, they were heading north in a Volkswagon. At this point, a witness v Miroslav Mitrovic, one of the Gypsies supposedly along for the ride v enters the picture, proffered by the Belgrade-based "Humanitarian Law Center."

THE 'HUMANITARIAN' WITH A GUILLOTINE

Anything that the "Humanitarian Law Center" has to say is suspect, since the HLC is the creature of Nastasa Kandic, who has made a career out of accusing her own people of being incorrigible murderers. Kandic v the perfect incarnation of what Isabel Paterson, the Old Right author of the 1940s, called "the humanitarian with a guillotine. She is currently suing the Serbian Socialist Party for "hate speech" and demanding that they be banned. Heavily subsidized by interventionist sugar-daddy George Soros, Kandic is a weird, isolated figure in Serbian politics, one of the few who openly sided with NATO during the bombing.

SABOTEUR WITH A PASSPORT?

Kandic's "witness" isn't proving all that helpful, for we are told by the Tribune that "there is a dispute between Fatos and Mr. Mitrovic over why the brothers did not have their U.S. passports with them on the journey." Although we are not told the nature of this dispute, it isn't hard to fathom: for since when does a covert agent on an important military mission carry his passport? According the family lawyer, the brothers were stopped by Serbian police in the village of Merdare, well over the border with Kosovo. What would 3 members of the Atlantic Brigade be doing on the wrong side of the border (even if there's some truth to the story that they were merely acting as a military escort for the Gypsies)? The obvious conclusion is that this incursion was a precursor of the wave of KLA terrorism that erupted in the border zone last year, as yet another "liberation army" sprang up, this time in southern Serbia.

BRIBERY AS TRUTH SERUM

The Gypsies were allowed to pass, but the brothers Bytyqi were sentenced to 15 days in prison for illegal entry into Yugoslavia, and on June 27 they were imprisoned at Prokuplie, in southern Serbia. The HLC has gotten a former police inspector, Zoran Stankovic, to testify that the three brothers were to be released into his custody and that he showed up at the prison to collect them four days before their release date, but they were nowhere to be found. According to Fatos, however, a big bribe to a prison official reveals the truth: that the three were "driven away in a white car and never seen again." Will the ICTFY admit evidence from admittedly bribed witnesses? Believe me, they aren't choosy: anonymous witnesses are not only allowed but positively encouraged, and they can submit their bought-and-paid-for "testimony" in absentia.

A HATE CRIME?

"They were killed because they were American citizens," argues Bajram Krasniqi, a Pristina-based lawyer hired by the Bytyqi family. "There were people in that prison who were in the rebel army and they were eventually released. This is the only case where someone was arrested, taken to court, tried, released out of the prison and then executed. This crime was planned, ordered and conducted without any judicial act, and it was done by Serbian officials in cooperation with officials at the prison. Hopefully, the Serb authorities will now arrest these people and they will be brought to justice."

LEGALITY IN WARTIME

Arrest them v for what? For executing three foreign nationals who were clearly members of a hostile military force, sent into Yugoslavia on a mission to wreak havoc? Fatos tells us that they wore KLA medallions around their necks, and no one denies that they were found on Serbian soil. Krasniqui claims that a "judicial process" was lacking in the sequence of events that led to their deaths, but by this standard every act of resistance to invasion must be adjudicated before a single shot is fired in self-defense.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING!

Krasniqi is head of the Kosovo Albanian "commission for war crimes and missing people," and a former member of KLA leader Hashem Thaci's "provisional government." Under this government, the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians from Kosovo was similarly lacking in the proper judicial procedures. The judicial process in the conquered province is so corrupt and biased that even the United Nations has had to acknowledge the problem. It has got to be a joke of a particularly grotesque sort that has a top official of the KLA standing on the principle of "legality"!

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

It's lucky for the ICTFY that Milosevic has decided not to retain legal counsel, and has chosen to stand on the "principle" of not answering any of the charges against him v on the grounds that the ICTFY has no legal standing or authority. He's right about ICTFY's illegitimacy, but it does not follow that a lawyer is "unnecessary." For surely this particular charge v the "murder" of the Bytyqi brothers v would be easy enough to refute. Slobo's defense lawyers could call to the stand the organizers and financiers of this mysterious "Atlantic Brigade." The defense could conceivably prove that the Bytyqi brothers, far from being innocent American tourists on a Balkan jaunt, were American mercenaries on a deadly mission. Just as it is Carla Del Ponte's job to personally link Milosevic to the decision to execute noncombatants, so the task of the defense would be to uncover the true nature and origins of the Atlantic Brigade and a give a full account of its activities. What an interesting trial that would be!

Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com

Kosovo conflict maims Albanian-American fighter

June 23, 1999
Web posted at: 7:43 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT)

Dervisholli, posing in his KLA uniform, top, was hit by a grenade while fighting in Kosovo and the lower part of his right leg was amputated

NEW YORK -- (CNN) Like ethnic Albanians refugees from Kosovo, Albanian-Americans who fought in the latest Balkan conflict are returning home. And some of them are bringing back permanent physical reminders of the experience.

Haxhi Dervisholli, 29, is one of them. In April, he joined about 300 other Albanian-American volunteers in a Yonkers, New York, parking lot where they said goodbye to their loved ones before departing to fight for the Kosovo Liberation Army.

In Kosovo, Dervisholli said he was in charge of heavy machine guns for the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.

Now he is back home in New York, with a strong sense of pride, but without the lower half of his right leg.

"A grenade fell right near my foot and blew it away," he said. He was hit about three weeks ago and taken to a field hospital where his leg was amputated just below the knee.

He is now undergoing rehabilitation in New York and will soon be fitted with a prosthesis, which his doctor said will enable him to participate in most normal activities.

Dervisholli, who was a construction worker before the war, said he has no regrets about fighting. "I am proud of what I did," he said. "I'm happy. I hope the war is over and we get our freedom."

Dervisholli added that he dreams that his family members who are now in Albania will one day return to Kosovo.

Correspondent Gary Tuchman contributed to this report.

48 posted on 11/15/2003 9:57:21 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: Incorrigible
At least we found mass grave in Iraq which is more than we can say about Yugoslavia.>>>

I stood in front of those mass graves myself. I saw the murdered dead. You do not know what you are talking about.
49 posted on 11/15/2003 10:01:53 AM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones
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To: Destro
Wrong again, Destro. Wouldn't be an issue if they were killed fighting in Kosovo--that happened to some other Albanian-Americans and that's the price they paid for volunteering. These guys were murdered by Serbs while in Serb custody after the war. Nobody but you thinks any different--even the Serb government says it is a crime.

Belgrade, July 17 - In one of the two mass graves discovered at Petrovo Selo near Kladovo, were found three male bodies believed to have been US citizens of ethnic Albanian origin, the Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told a press conference on Tuesday.

"Three male bodies, shot at close range, blindfolded and hands tied with wire, were found atop a heap of bodies in a pit at Petrovo Selo, near Kladovo. The Kursumlija Magistrate Court document found on the bodies indicates the identity of the victims as Chicago-born brothers Bytyqui: Agron (1978), Mehmet (1976), Ylli (1974)," Mihajlovic said, adding that no other papers had been found. .

According to him, the Interior Ministry Working Group looked through the records of the Prokuplje Secretariat of Internal Affairs (SUP Prokuplje) and established that on June 26 the Bytyqui brothers had been arrested near the village of Rudare in the municipality of Prokuplje and sentenced to 15 days in jail for crossing the Kosovo-Serbia border illegally. .

"The Bytyqui brothers were released at the request of the prison warden on July 8, four days before the end of their sentence. When, on the same day, the SUP Prokuplje Foreign Citizens Inspector came to the District Prison to hand in the court ruling on the prohibition of entry into the FRY for a period of two years, he was told that the offenders had already been discharged," Mihajlovic said.

"This is a very serious crime, as there is no evidence pointing to the victims having been tried and given a death sentence legally. At the moment we are checking out the possibility of the brothers having been volunteers of the Atlantic Brigade, made up of Albanians living abroad."

"Regardless of this, the crime was committed during peacetime, after the Kumanovo Agreement. This is part of a closely guarded state secret that is now surfacing and which we must come to terms with," Mihajlovic stressed, adding that he had received on Monday the American Ambassador William Montgomery who required a full investigation of the crime.

50 posted on 11/15/2003 10:03:47 AM PST by mark502inf
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To: Destro
They need be dug up and thrown to the pigs.>>

Nothing more need be said. You damn yourself.
51 posted on 11/15/2003 10:04:12 AM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones
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To: mark502inf
Albanian Americans in violation of the neutrality act and guerillas allied to al-Qaeda in violation of the Geneva convention.
52 posted on 11/15/2003 10:05:38 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: van_erwin
I don't know whether Gen. Wesley Clark is qualified to be president, but Peter J. Boyer's profile in this week's New Yorker—which paints him as scarily unqualified—is an unfair portrait as well as a misleading, occasionally inaccurate précis of the 1999 Kosovo war and Clark's role in commanding it.

Unfortunately for Mr Kaplan, about 1000 times more people read the "New Yorker" as read "Slate". (Does anyone read "Slate" except us?)

53 posted on 11/15/2003 10:06:22 AM PST by montag813
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To: mark502inf
The 'informed discussion' paradigm doesn't apply to Balkans threads.

Pitiful, but then it goes a long way towards explaining why the Balkans themselves are in the state they're in.

54 posted on 11/15/2003 10:31:14 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: mark502inf
The words of a Clintonian ambassador-an administration that was in league to al-Qaeda.
55 posted on 11/15/2003 10:55:27 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: Destro
Oh, and you're standing here advocating hearts and flowers. Throw their flesh to be eaten by pigs. Right.
56 posted on 11/16/2003 5:14:31 PM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones
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To: Ronly Bonly Jones
The brothers Bytyqi were buried at St. Mary's in Yonkers, which is a Catholic cemetery, so chances are they weren't Muslim.

Go figure.

57 posted on 11/16/2003 5:30:45 PM PST by Hoplite
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To: Destro
The words of a Clintonian ambassador-an administration that was in league to al-Qaeda.

Uh, Destro, it was the Serbian Minister of the Interior who described the murder of the Bytyqi brothers as a crime.

And BTW, Ambassador Montgomery is not a "Clintonite"; he was picked to serve high in the State Dept under Reagan & Bush I; is a decorated Army veteran and was accepted by Bush II as ambassador & confirmed by the Senate in 2001.

Destro, is there ANYTHING you get right on this forum?

58 posted on 11/17/2003 7:58:29 AM PST by mark502inf
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To: mark502inf
AMBASSADOR MONTGOMERY TO HOST RECEPTION IN HONOR OF FULBRIGHT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

On Thursday, March 6, at 18:30, Ambassador William D. Montgomery will host a reception at his residence (Uzicka 44) in honor of the recently re-established Fulbright Alumni Association.

The Fulbright program, named after the late Senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, was established in 1946 and has exchanged scholars and academics from the U.S. and Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) since 1964. It is believed that over 800 individuals from Serbia and Montenegro have participated since its inception.

59 posted on 11/17/2003 10:43:56 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: mark502inf
Ambassador William D. Montgomery was nominated by President Clinton in October, 1997 to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia. He assumed this post in January, 1998. His previous assignment was Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State for Bosnian Peace Implementation.
60 posted on 11/17/2003 10:52:14 AM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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